Category: New Zealand

Auckland is the main hub for international transport to and from New Zealand. And so it should be as it is by far the largest city here. Our flight to Argentina was to depart from Auckland. The destruction of Christchurch meant that we could not possibly spend time there so rather than sit in a…

The final few days on the south island were great though we have fallen behind with our blogging. So apologies if this is a bit vague in places but we want to get up to date before we get to Argentina. From Buscot Station our plan was to get as far past Mount Cook as…

After Dunedin we decided to revert to plan A and camp. We headed up the coast to Omaru and grabbed a pitch in the Top Ten Holiday Site. They provide a McCamping type experience. Sadly it started to rain around 7pm and didn’t stop until we left at 10am the following morning. The bargain tent…

This travelling lark isn’t all glamour you know. Even in a great country like New Zealand. When travelling through Central Otago on our way to Queenstown the girl who served us the fruit ice cream mentioned that she hailed from Dunedin. When we asked what it was like she told us not to go there…

I was really looking forward to getting back to Queenstown as it was my first chance to get back on a mountain bike. To get there we had to travel through Central Otago, which was an area made to sound fairly bland by the guidebook. This wasn’t the case, as our drive meandered through rolling…

Thanks Ryan for updating the blog and thanks for the concern shown. We were far away enough from the quake to not feel it, but watching the footage on TV has made us feel very lucky. We were due to be in Christchurch in a few days to then fly out to Auckland and on…

A quick update from family in England. Mark and Claire were 100 miles away from the earthquake in Christchurch and were unaffected. They are visiting “Narnia” today. I’m sure they’ll update as soon as possible.

They say the best things in life are free and it’s so true, as we had one of the most memorable experiences of our trip the other day and it didn’t cost us a penny. After a night camping at Colac Bay and lunch in Invercargill, we headed to Curio Bay as Mark said he…

After the Glaciers we started to make our way down the remainder of the west coast in order to reach Milford Sound. We camped 2 nights, the first at beautiful Lake Wanaka and the other at Moke Lake near Queenstown. On the way we also stopped in Queenstown for a morning to search for a…

The weather had deteriorated thus reducing our desire to camp so we ended up staying at a hostel in Franz Josef, the location of one of the two glaciers which attract tourists on the west coast. All was not lost though as we roomed with Everett, the Canadian Backpacking Grandfather. We had the usual sharing…

We are using the Guide Books less and less but Barrytown Knife Making was a guide book recommendation that stood out and appealed to me. A day spent making my own knife with Steve and Robyn. I set off from our Hostel leaving Claire to explore Greymouth, as she didn’t fancy making a knife. Barrytown…

As you all know, for us Thailand was always our chance to enjoy fine beaches and swim in the sea. So it was a big surprise to find beaches in New Zealand that were more stunning than anything we saw in Thailand. From the port at Picton we headed to the beautiful Abel Tasman National…